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NASA urged to rejoin the hunt for gravitational waves

GET back in the space-based hunt for gravitational waves. That’s the message to NASA of a report from the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on how well the nation is meeting key goals in astronomy and astrophysics.

The report assesses advances made since the US’s 2010 decadal survey, a wish list that the astronomical community releases every 10 years to identify research priorities.

“NASA has been urged to finish what it started: hunt for gravitational waves using the LISA experiment“

“The progress in the first five years has been incredible,” says Jacqueline Hewitt at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was chair of the committee that wrote the report. “The government is getting its money’s worth in terms of the resources it’s been investing in support for scientists.”

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That success prompted the committee to recommend that NASA finish what it started: the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). This experiment was designed to hunt gravitational waves from even bigger black holes than LIGO can detect by sending lasers between three spacecraft arranged in a triangle.

It was originally a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, but NASA pulled out in 2011 citing funding limitations. “That’s been put on hold, even dissolved,” Hewitt says.

ESA plans to launch “evolved LISA” or eLISA on its own, and its test bed LISA Pathfinder spacecraft has been performing beautifully.

Given that success – and the fact that we now know gravitational waves exist – the National Academies committee urged NASA to renew its partnership with ESA.